[Gramps-users] Re: General Update - upcoming plans

[Thomas L. <tl...@ma...>]

> From: Steven Usdansky <usd...@ro...>
> To: gra...@li...
> Subject: Re: [Gramps-users] General Update - upcoming plans
>
> On 05 Nov 2003 22:43:39 -0700
> Don Allingham <dal...@us...> scribbled:
>
>> Bret,
>>
>> I haven't picked a database backend yet, and I'll rely a lot on 
>> feedback
>> from users to do so. I do have several goals in mind:
>>
>> 1) Good speed and memory usage
>> 2) Easy installation
>> 3) Decent programming interface
...
>> However, I'm always interested in users' opinions.
>>
>> DOn
>
> As long as you're asking for opinions, I'll cast my votes for mysql and
> postgresql. Stable, well-documented, widely available.  They may be 
> overkill for
> anything I can think of doing with my genealogy database at the 
> moment, but who
> knows what the future may hold?
>

And, here's one vote for something that can be built into the program.  
Installing a full-blown RDBMS is a non-trivial exercise.  If my Mom 
ever has a hope of using GRAMPS (and getting away from an ancient 
version of Family Tree Maker on Windows), the program must be easy to 
install and easy to troubleshoot.

Going with a technology which is bundled with Python seems an obvious 
choice.  That said, the idea of SQLite is intriguing.   I'm not too 
familiar with it, but is does it allow a bit of separation of the data 
source from the rest of the code?  In other words, if the rest of the 
code migrates to using ANSI standard SQL to access the data, can a 
SQLite backend be bundled with the program, but a run-time option be 
set up which would point the program to using a (possibly) remote RDBMS 
instead of the included backend?

This would give Steven what he wants, at the expense of more complexity 
for maintaining his configuration, but it would give my Mom what she 
needs, too.

Including an option to export the data into the current XML file format 
would be a really great thing, IMHO.  Like Jochen, I'd like to get to 
the data easily and do things with it that would be harder if it was 
not accessible just as a set of well-formed text.

Just my $0.02.
thomas